Monday October 1 started cold and overcast with blustery winds and a constant threat of rain, a typical autumn day in the Pacific Northwest. About 150 search engine optimizers gathered in a stately lecture theatre at the University of Washington’s Kane Hall to hear a six hour lecture from SEOmoz’s Rand Fishkin. Arguably the most famous SEO in the world, Rand kept his audience entertained through the eight unique segments of the session.

This post is the first part of what is turning out to be a much longer narrative than I expected. A lot can be packed into a day and virtually everyone who came to Seattle this week worked for 20 odd hours Monday, seven of which were spent in the lecture hall. (Please see this Flickr page for all photos from the event. Links in the article lead to specific photos)

The room is far warmer than expected and sweat beads the foreheads of most of the attendees. One wall is all windows over looking UW’s quadrangle. At the front of the room a lecture stand holds Rand’s laptop which is connected to an overhead projector casting a PowerPoint presentation on the theatre sized screen behind him. Three video cameras are stationed in the aisles forming a semi-circle around the small stage. Against the back wall stands an ancient pipe organ which makes me wonder if Dax is going to show up. He doesn’t and as nobody in the room has the talent or temerity to play it, the organ remains silent all day. Over the course of a half hour people filter into the room quietly finding seats. Scott and Gillian are running around trying to find more chairs to accommodate the larger than expected turnout. As more people filter in, the room gets hotter and conversation grows louder.

SEOmoz’s newest intern, Danny, takes to the stage to share his WiFi password, allowing several live-bloggers to immediately post their notes to the Net. Rand, Gillian and a few other Mozzers are on the balcony taking a short meeting with clients before the lecture begins. Promptly at 9AM, Rand takes the stage and his microphone fails. Not an auspicious way to start what is going to be a very long day of speaking.

The technical issues are fixed fairly quickly and five minutes after nine Rand starts talking. Actually, he is stalling for time waiting for a few more people to show up. Having just visited the nearby Redmond campus of Microsoft, Rand starts in on the new MSN Live noting how it now pulls dynamic comments about products or services from blogs and other online reviews when product queries are conducted. He suggests one of the many vast improvements introduced by MSN Live is the removal of the Blogspot spam that had previously infected the engine. Rand also jokes (in all seriousness) that MSN does not show any references for the iPhone. “What’s up with that?” he asks.

Glancing up towards the back of the room, Rand catches a signal from Scott Willoughby. The vast majority of registered attendees have arrived and the actual lecture is about to begin. Rand starts off with a few general statements. First he asks us to turn off our cell phones. Next, he strongly encourages us to ask as many questions as possible. Lastly, he cautions us to prepare for a long information filled day. By the time the day has ended, he will be hoarse and tired but happy. He doesn’t know it yet but his lecture is going to be an enormous success.

“We didn’t intend to make a profit on this day”, Scott explains as he and I take a short break on the balcony. “We broke even at 100 people but we will put the rest of the money into the after-party tonight.”

Charging between $249 and $350 per ticket, the training session was attended by people from all points west of the Mississippi and even attracted someone across the Pacific from Pakistan. Though they did not intend to turn a profit, the Mozzers obviously raised a lot of attention with relatively little advertising.

The real purpose of the event was to create video tutorial assets for the premium content section on the SEOmoz website. That’s what the three cameras and professional video crew were there for.

The seminar was divided into eight general sections covering:

An Introduction to Search Engine Marketing
Search Engine Algorithms
Search Engine Friendly Design
Keyword Research and Keyword Targeting
Content Creation Strategies
Social Media Marketing
Blogging and the Blogosphere
Analytics and Metrics

I’ve attended hundreds of academic and professional lectures over the course of my life and as I wrote earlier, Rand spoke for about six hours and was informative and entertaining the entire time. That is a special accomplishment, especially when speaking to a field of colleagues in an information saturated sector. Everyone who attended walked away with more than they came with.

Just after lunch, Rebecca and Jane from SEOmoz took Stoney deGeyter and myself on a tour of the SEOmoz offices. Later, the Mozsquad was to treat their 150+ guests to an evening of food, free drinks and pool at Jillians at the south end of Lake Union. More on the tour and the evening in tomorrow’s entry, “Shooting Stick with SEOs”.